Tools for Constructing a Good Infographic
An information graphic is an assortment of graphics, data visualizations, and brief text that provides a clear summary of a subject. Infographics are easy to make and are the perfect balance when dealing with an abundance of information. In this blog post I will show examples of good infographics that provide a clear message without overloading information.
Clicking on the Infograph below will take you to the website where I found it!
Infographics may be used for many purposes. You may share them on social media and post them on your blog. When creating an infographic, there are several internet resources available to assist. During this procedure, there are few stages that you should not skip. Creating an infographic outline, selecting a template, and adding your own customizations to your infographic are all important steps in creating a useful infographic.
Clicking on the Infograph below will take you to the website where I found it!
Sources
Health Visualization
The goal of visualizing health is to provide health professionals and other individuals who are interested in educating the public about health risks with direction and motivation. Widespread usage of this material has made it easier for medical professionals to communicate complex ideas to individuals who need clarification. There are many great options for presenting health data in Visualizing Health. Maintaining and improving health visualization is crucial for scientists, designers, and other experts. Websites like vizhealth.org can be helpful tools to use when visualizing health data.
On the left is a graph that shows how this website is a great tool for visualizing health. Being able to visualize medical data helps us to quickly understand our health. Diagnosis, statistics, and treatment plans can be difficult to understand without visual aids. It is important to stay informed when it comes to your health.
Using the Visualizing Health tool
The website titled “Visualizing Health” is a scientifically vetted tool created by the University of Michigan in order to help healthcare professionals and others alike to communicate data about health. It contains graphic displays of health data through different types of visuals and imaging. It’s goal is to assist audiences in making informed decisions about their health, and also helps aid healthcare professionals in their efforts to seamlessly communicate health risk information to the public.
The website makes it accessible and shares an easy-to-use guide on how to create data visualizations. Below, I have made one as an example based on information from the World Health Organization. This is one of the many ways these tools can be used to communicate data to an audience.
Visualizing Health
Upon navigating throughout the website, the importance of the tools and calculators on this website became apparent. I started at the risk calculator, where you enter different demographics that will compute your risk of cardiovascular disease based on the Framingham Health Study. Although this calculator may not be accurate for everyone, it provides an estimate that could be used as a baseline for your health. A tool like this could be used as an awakening for someone; Someone who enters their data and realizes that they may be a high risk, may decide to change their lifestyle.
Here is the visual and data I received after entering my demographics.
As you can see, based on the risk calculator my likelihood of developing a cardiovascular disease in the next 10 years is about 2%. I then used the icon array to put more perspective on my data.
This visual shows the percentage of people with similar demographics as mine that would be likely to develop a cardiovascular disease within the next 10 years (out of 100).
Like I said before, this tool can be used as a great estimate for people’s health. Overall, I believe this website is a step towards modernized health support.
Visualizing Health
Using the VizHealth website helped me understand how to visualize graphics better and with this experience, got me a new tool to help in providing information or data the correct way. Above in the figure, is my take on an icon array. I did not know they called them this and didn’t even know what it was until I saw it. This figure above is only an example and does not with real information. It is just an example of an icon array and if you go to the website, you can also see how to do this type of graphic. With this, you can change however you want and use any information you want. I think this site is very valuable for learning about data visualizations because of how you can learn through doing it. It is not just a website that has you reading, it gives you tools to help you understand and you can do it yourself and learn how to create a data visulization.
Exploring Viz Health
Vizhealth.org is a dedicated platform that specializes in the visualization of health data, aiming to enhance the accessibility and comprehension of complex health-related information. The website offers a variety of tools and resources designed to assist users—ranging from healthcare professionals and researchers to educators and the general public—in creating clear, engaging, and informative visual representations of health data.
By leveraging advanced visualization techniques, Vizhealth.org enables users to transform raw data into intuitive graphics, charts, and interactive dashboards. This not only aids in the interpretation of intricate datasets but also facilitates better communication of health trends, outcomes, and statistics to diverse audiences.
After messing around with their Icon Array tool, I can conclude that I found this tool and whole website in general very helpful. It is an valuable resource for putting information together into a visual. When data is presented in charts or graphs, it becomes clearer and more engaging, allowing viewers to quickly grasp trends and patterns. This visual representation can also make it easier to communicate findings to others, making discussions more effective and informed. For my visual I made, I just used some simple statistics on how many people out of 100 have a cellphone.
VizHealth Icon Array
Lamar Miller
I really enjoyed the personalization of the VizHealth website. I believe this is a very creative site that takes data visualization and allows the results to serve a greater good. It was informative and easy to follow. It was good to know I have about 5% risk of developing cardiovascular disease in the next 10 years. This data is critical to helping users detect risks early so they can begin treatment or make better lifestyle choices.
For my icon array, I researched data on hypertension in young men. As it pertains to men 18-39, there is a 1/3 chance that they have hypertension or blood pressure above 130/80. This can be seen in the icon array below with approximately 33 out of 100 males at risk.
VizHealth – The Uses of Infographics for Public Information
It is important for people who know how to read data to understand how privileged they are when assessing public information. Although, luckily, sometimes information is displayed in a way that is easily digestible to the average person, sometimes there are graphics involved that are aimed to convey information, but they are not easily understood by those who are not well-versed in data or graph reading.
Luckily, sites such as VizHealth give users the opportunity to learn in real time the ways that information can be displayed in an infographic. Using the risk calculator, individuals can input their own personal information and get an easily assessable visual of their personal risk for cardiac disease. The additional explanation under the bar graph aids in the user’s understanding of this tool.
As you can see, the layout of the graph that is displayed above is user-friendly and can be easily understood. Simple coloration is used and the information that is pertinent is magnified and displayed in a bold font, which draws the attention of the viewer.
Icon Array Generator
VizHealth offers an additional service which offers users the chance to visualize statistics. Through multiple google searches, I assessed the prevalence of multiple ailments that plague the American population today. By seeing how many individuals out of 100 were liable of contracting certain diseases, I was able to log this information into the Icon Array Generator of VizHealth’s website. This provided me with a well constructed, easily digestible graph of the statistics that I had previously input. Below you can view the graphs that I (with the help of the icon generator) made to display the prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease (in individuals over 85), prostate cancer in men, and breast cancer in women.
Through using this icon generator, I do believe that it is a useful tool to display variables that have an effect on the public. The ability to display icons in a male, female, or neutral way (with the availability to apply different coloration to the icons) makes VizHealth’s icon generator feature a personally customizable platform for the general public to learn more about how they can assess data.
Icon Array
After exploring this website for quite some time, I would say it definitely opened up a new perspective on infographics for me. To a beginner, this website can be extremely valuable for learning about infographics. After experimenting with the Icon array feature, I have created an infographic regarding the number of golfers who are likely to hit a hole in 1 in their lifetime.
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Insightful Infographics
This video demonstrates different types of infographics and when each type should or shouldn’t be used.
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